It's all good (Thing 6)

I am loving the Flickr letters app!

"Pura vida" doesn' translate into Spanish as "Pure life," which it appears to say, but as slang that means "Everything's OK." I try to remind myself "Pura vida" all the time. I get a little "sturm und drang" sometimes.

Onto topic: Mashups in my library. Since we are an academic library here at Flagler College, I’m having a hard time seeing the usefulness of some of these tools. I feel like the gravitas of online academic research would be mocked by cutesy web apps.

The only place I see something like the Flickr letters app being useful in my library would be if our education department had its own library homepage. Since it doesn’t, I don’t foresee particularly extensive use of these online services in our library.

However, if my library had young adult reader services, I would love to use mashups to capture the imaginative spirit of youth services.

Skipping through images ahead to ... (Thing 7)

I’m cheating. I skipped ahead to Thing 7 over 5 and 6---just because I felt like it!

This mosaic from Big Huge Labs may seem like a series of architectural photos—which they are—but they’re all different domes from the original Chicago Public Library. Connecting the images to my current Thing is sort of a stretch since one represents history and one represents the future, but, underneath the stained glass and networked computers, we’re libraries.

Libraries were founded on the radical principle that all people were capable of governing themselves and that the only thing they lacked was an educational vehicle to provide the necessary intelligence. Today's libraries still function on the principle that all citizens deserve equal access to information, even though now our information is delivered in largely digital format. Computers or books, libraries still serve as the radical meeting point where all patrons have access to the information they seek.

And how do I want to use this image tool in my library? I want to mosaic my library’s website header and make a shifting pattern of our library’s photo. That would be cool.

For me, this project was just fun. And skipping ahead on Things wasn’t my only sin; I made a vanity graphic. Enjoy … it describes me.

RSS concluded with LOLspeak (Thing 4)

I can’t stop rewriting this post because for some reason I keep sounding unprofessional. Writing about my blog consumption turns on my texting slang aggregator. Maybe I con-text-ualize myself differently because I mostly read my friends’ blogs, and I tend to speak in an ultra-casual OMG way with them. (We never say LOL unless we’re being really sarcastic, by the way. LOL is so passé.)

I read blogs socially. I know I should be reading something like the Daily Kos, but I’m usually reading my friends’ blogs, especially “A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette.” Online networking like Facebook is great, and I use it almost daily, but keeping up with blogs that publish sporadically can be challenging. RSS-ing my friends gives me the freedom to see what they’re up to when they’re up to it.

Although I’ve had blog followers on my own private blog, and although I know how to insert an RSS feed option into my blogs, I had never actually done it until Thing 4. And, as far as putting all my friends in one place, I had never used Google Reader before. Now I’m discovering, “Hey, look, I can see you all together at once!” Google Reader is like my own little coffee house.

I also learned a lesson the hard way. I thought I’d be cute and put a subscription to one of the gossip websites I read occasionally on my Google Reader. Within milliseconds my aggregator was overfilled with a million posts. I discovered that Google Reader saw my gossip site as a series of individual posts, not one cloud under the name of the site. Oops. Although I stopped my subscription to the gossip feed within minutes, I can’t figure out how to get the headlines out of my inbox! Now I know to seriously evaluate the website in question and decide how it will affect my inbox.

I know this is the “wrong” answer, but, for the short term, I’m using RSS in Google Reader for my friends and for the handful of “23 Things” blogs I’m following. In the long term, I need to evaluate which library sites are of value to me and subscribe to those rather than hunting them down sporadically.

I’m also envisioning a with-it, jargon-filled library blog aimed at clients that includes an RSS feed. I’m teh win cause I no LOLspeak like bebeh kittehs!!1!1!!!

Search for the hula hoop blogs! (Thing 3)

I started my blog search with Technorati. I chose the topic “hula hoop” because I make and sell hula hoops. I was disappointed at first because I got a lot of Wii fitness results, but as I looked closer, I found a couple of interesting blog links, and I found a section on hula hoop videos. As a hula hoop professional, I was familiar with a lot of the websites Technorati retrieved, but these were high quality sites that I know give reliable information. Kudos to Technorati. I see how relevant those results would be to someone new to hooping. If I hadn’t known of those sites before, I would have clicked them first and discovered a whole network of hula hoopers.

I tried for Opinmind and Sphere next, but neither had search functions. They were aimed at tools for bloggers to improve reaching their target audiences and maximizing hits and sales. Disappointing.

Google blog search was kind of disjointed, but I learned that Michelle Obama likes to hula hoop-- a fun fact. Again I got a lot of results for sites I already knew.
I gave Advanced Google blog search a half-hearted try and excluded the term “Wii.” I got some pretty odd results from casual bloggers who were just mentioning in passing that they liked adult sized hula hooping. As I read their testimonials, I found I liked those results because they added a cute human dynamic instead of hula hoop advertising gimmickry.

Perpetually beta (Thing 2)

I’ve been reading some L2 and W2 articles a lot lately to think about ways to incorporate new technology into our library here at Flagler College. One comment I read over and over is that the internet is “perpetually beta,” meaning all content on the web is infinitely transmutable. The ability to adapt library web resources brings the possibility of instant transition to new client needs or library dissemination of information.

Stephen Abram commented on connecting Amazon book images to the OPAC and creating virtual, browsable bookshelves. My greatest concern of L2 computer technology based transformations is the lack of serendipity when browsing stacks. Creating browsable bookshelves eliminates that lack of spontaneity in digital research by adding connectivity to the OPAC, links that click clients through related but unexpected material. (As an aside, librarians have always been able to do this by knowing how to browse metadata taxonomy, but clients don’t necessarily have the knowledge or skills to follow leads to unanticipated resources.)

Speaking of taxonomy, I am afraid of folksonomy as much as I want to implement it. Blyberg hints that libraries must understand users’ search patterns and allowing for their input to OPAC records based on natural language querying.

Blyberg also states that L2 is not an option—it’s already happening. Storey says that calling new initiatives “Library 2.0” implies that “Library 1.0” never responded to the evolution of user or librarian needs. Presuming a “Library 2.0” model makes libraries static since the great library at Alexandria. Blyberg insists that libraries are already responding to L2 needs, consciously or not.

Storey says that the web has become “the center of a new digital lifestyle.” Libraries are as perpetually beta as the internet. RSS feeds for user selected library updates. IM reference chat. Digital subscription to periodicals instead of print. Coffee in libraries. The library changes as physically as it does virtually. We are L2 whether we have intended to embrace it or not.

Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me (Thing 1)

Or at least watching my IP.

Already a blogger, I took NEFLIN’s challenge of adding features to my blog. The first has been to add Google Analytics, which I highly recommend. Google Analytics offers a free service to track number of visits to your site, which posts visitors looked at, and how long they stayed on your page. I put the link to Google Analytics on the right over there under “Sometimes I Help” so that you can get started with this tool too.

I also have another suggestion to anyone who might be new to blogging: don’t write your post in your blog’s edit window! I write all my posts in my word processing software of choice so that I can edit and spell check easily. I find those tiny little post windows of Blogger and Wordpress cramped and annoying. I want to see my text run free on the screen in Microsoft Word! Additionally, I name my blog file and do a “Save As” right away and click the save icon several times as I write. This way, I know I’ve got back-up should I magically find the perfect button combo that deletes all.

Can’t wait to network and learn more about my fellow Web 2.0’ers!